Yesterday I came across for the first time what is Oedipus and Electra Complex. I don’t know how Freud, the famous psycho analyst made his theories about this, but the basic ideas are sufficient for me to surmise my own to make sense of certain aspects of certain incidents or people.
Remember that its present in all of us, to the extent that its correct, but it entirely depends on how we interpret our own tendencies to be successful or failing in our own relationship with the world outside. Remember that the world inside of us is different to the world out of us.
Human beings are blind, or rather blindfolded by our own limitations and we often grow out of this darkness if we can interpret correctly our own dilemma but often we can also commit grievous mistakes unbeknownst to us a priori that forces us to get back to the painful curse of returning to that state of blindness.
In retrospect we just make attempts to deal with our blindness which is not completely away from us all the time. this is our fate.
As children or rather in our nascent underdeveloped phase we are that blind self, as regard to the vagaries of relationships, we find ourselves in. We begin to respond to our outside world with the innate tendencies of our sexual nature.
The child sexuality doesn’t differentiate from a mother or father, from any other potential amorous relationship. This is what I call a relationship resolution. There is a limit to which we can distinguish an external person. Children are blind, apart from their innate intellectual and physical capabilities, which are not fully grown.
A child might have an incestuous affinity in sexual denominations toward a parent of the opposite gender to him or her self. Incest being a socially disapproved relationship tendency isn’t fully comprehended yet by a child. Also see that its easy to kidnap a kid, because they can’t distinguish an intruder from one who is dear protector because the psychoanalysis relationship resolution is not yet well developed.
When a female progeny is addressed; she has a potential insecurity from a biological or social mother, while a possessive affinity is drawn toward a biological or social father. The nascent woman wants to possess what she barely has, in terms of fatherly love. But it doesn’t stop at being a simple affection but rather a psychoanalytical desire to posses the fatherly qualities.
It doesn’t stop at the hair or muscles of the father or the pitch of his voice. It can be present in an abstract and yet surreptitious crave for the fathers genitalia, not necessarily simply for an object of desire, but as well to posses it. It happens about at the same age as a male progeny develops similar tendencies toward the opposite gender person, beginning first from the mother her self, biological or social not withstanding. The age is about 3 to 6 years in both gender.
Remember that its not unhealthy, this is how the child is making sense of the world whose failure can devastate many relationships well into adulthood and can constitute social and national crimes.
The tendency for a woman progeny to posses the father (or in my extensive opinions, toward any one of opposite gender, but simply begins from the father) is known as Electra complex or Penis Envy. Its a sweet and bitter tendency which alternates between love and insecurity. I am happy that I don’t have it. i anyway get its privilege. Oh I am so unhappy I don’t have it. Oh I can’t have it. I must hate all that can have it. So on so forth.
Genitalia envy is not the only type of envy thats available to us, and the envy is equally seen in male as well. The world thus debates castration anxiety, female genitalia mutilation and any relationship issues with such at the base of our affection as well as insecurities.
To counter the feminine failures there have been psychoanalysts (Karen Horney eg) who have brought in the tendencies of womb envy and envy for parturition (child birth by the female) into the controversial psycho analysis theory.
The Oedipus complex on the other hand “seen” in male child (3-6 years) is known as castration anxiety.
I believe its castration anxiety which was the reason behind Sanjay Gandhi’s infamous drive for male gonadectomy. Sanjay Gandhi might have had a failed Oedipus complex where his his child like incestuous tendency toward his own mother (and additionally toward any female potential partner, it just begins with a motherly figure that the child first comes across, when he is developing his psychoanalysis resolution) was the reason why he was so zealed about castrating entire male population of India.
The castration anxiety is this; he finds utter attraction toward potential female partners likely beginning his own mother which leaves him utterly embarrassed when he realizes this facet of his sexual affinity. this develops a possible punishment from more powerful members of society. the fear of losing his manhood in the hands of these retributive social powers sits deep in his psyche.
It could be his own father, an uncle somewhere or a more overbearing male friend. The shame associated with a social disapproval of the incestuous tendencies present in himself leads him to find a reason of this tendency. Oh my God its my entire male factor itself. So the interpretation all men are like this, hence all men must be castrated.
Its a deep failure because he doesn’t differentiate other men and their possible success in redefining their incestuous behavior all by themselves. They did not need Sanjay Gandhi to remind them how they are going to play their libido and how they are going to plan their parenthood.
A way ward son of a rich and powerful family holds the sway on everyone in the nation.
Oedipus was a Greek character in a tragedy epic who kills his father, the king Laius, by way of a quarrel where he doesn’t know him, simply the arguments enrages him. Then he becomes a successor to the King Laius and marries the wife of the king. In total ignorance that the wife of the deceased King is his own mother. In other words he doesn’t yet know that Laius was the King who was killed by himself in the quarrel. Also that he is the son of Laius whose wife, his own mother, is the queen he just married and produced offspring with.
When Oedipus realizes this, he destroys his own eyes and becomes blind.
This is a story of entire humanity. We are blind and commit mistakes not approved by society. We have deep failures and insecurities which originate in our own nature.
In yet another vindication howsoever wispy it might sound to you in its reasoning I find the recent developments in Kashmir to be emerging, although in a larger sense of the meaning of the Oedipus complex, from the same.
The Kashmiri is the Oedipus who kills the father, India, and marries Kashmir the mother and produces offspring that are terrorists and those who are not yet bear an uncanny affectionate endorsement of the terrorists out of brotherly relations.
This leads the Oedipus deeply mourning the killing of the other Oedipus, the terrorists and lose their eye sight in the vicious counter-firing of the army of Laius; India.
Mehbooba Mufti has written to New Delhi to get eye doctors for the grave risk of losing eyesight is running high.
Don’t lose your eye sight in endorsing terrorists. Don’t fail like Oedipus just because that tendency is there.
M Dash Foundation: C Cube Learning 
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